Living Lies ✜ Hunger Games x Reader

"Panem May Never Know"

For a split second, everything phases out. The fireball seems to disintegrate away into nothing and the flames raging around you extinguishes. The forest remains as your mind slips into a blissful denial, to where you're sitting on a log back in District 12, sharpening knives.

Innocent. Happy, even.

You're not in the Hunger Games. There is no Hunger Games.

Then suddenly, the cold icy sting of the truth backhands you across the face, quite proverbially refreshing amongst the flames. You awaken from your second long stupor, met once again by near death.

Where were you again?

Ah, that's right—reality.

Your visionary of the forest disappears, leaving you with only a glimmer of hope of survival as the fireball hurtles towards you at the speed of sound. Quick as a jackrabbit, yet ironically mimicking a turtle, you tuck yourself together into a tight ball to avoid getting incinerated. At the very least, you can avoid your limbs being burned.

Part "A" of your plan worked—your limbs aren't burnt off.

Part "B" however, fails. Epically.

While your reflexes are usually pretty fast, they weren't fast enough this time. Your body had turned in just the right way at the right moment while curled together that the fireball didn't hit you in the leg, where it could have, but rather skimmed by and still managed to land a hit to the left side of your stomach.

You let out a screech of pain as the fireball connects with your flesh, burning it instantly. You uncurl yourself, throwing yourself on the ground in an ungraceful manner, attempting to put out the fire by rolling. After a second, the fire is gone.

But the pain remains, tearing at your side with invisible claws and searing with white heat, so blindingly painful it flashes back and forth between cold and hot in the same second. It's your body, desperately attempting to cool your body down and fix it, but the burn has stripped that skin of any sensations, leaving a raw, open wound that even Mrs. Everdeen, the talented healer, would likely shudder at.

In a nutshell, it hurts like your own personal, literal hell.

You rip away the fabric around the burn, gently reaching out to hover your hand around it. You feel the heat radiating off of the burn area, and you immediately retract your hand away from the wound. As you stare at the charred and simmering flesh left from the fireball, you feel tears welling up behind your eyes—partially from the smoke, likely, and also partially from the fact that the realization hits you that this injury might not only cost you the plan, but your life as well. And with your life gone, there goes Peeta's chances at life as well.

As the first tears very slowly and silently trickle down your face, you quickly wipe them away and try to push yourself to your feet with your hands. Once you've scrambled back into a standing position, you decide to test your luck a bit more and take off back in the direction you came.

While you clutch your aching and burning side, you half dart half stumble along the pathways of the flaming forest until you reach the tree you were asleep in not that long ago. And you're glad that you got out in time, since the entire tree is now engulfed in flames.

Lucky you.

You don't bother to do a double take, instead racing right past the towering tree, hoping to find the route back where you came from. You search your memory for any natural land marks, and you feel slightly assured when you spot a distinctive tree stump that you remember from the first time passing through the forest.

After running from the ever growing fire for several minutes—which feels like hours to you—you're convinced you messed up somehow and should double back, determined not to give up. . But then suddenly, through the haze of smoke and fog, you spot a faint glimmer of moonlight glinting off something maybe a hundred feet away (if you don't do feet I think that's like, 30 meters).